When a handgun is fired, the muzzle tends to jump or raise as a consequence of the recoil caused by the firing of each bullet. This is sometimes known as muzzle flip, which causes the user to have to re-aim, re-adjust the handgun after each shot is fired. As a standard practice, shooters attempt to compensate for the recoil by applying vice-like pressure on the side of the firearm with their left thumb (assuming a right-handed shooter) positioned high and prominent on the side of the firearm. However, this process is known to not work real well, and can actually result in reducing accuracy and reducing speed of firing, given that lateral pressure does very little to reduce the vertical movement caused by recoil.
A traditional and popular handgun grip is shown in FIGS. 1A-C, sometimes referred to as “thumbs-forward”. This position results in the shooter's support hand thumb resting on the frame of the gun. This often interferes with the slide (using the word “slide” in its noun form) of a typical gun as it moves backwards after each firing. This matters because the slide needs to move, uninhibited, to the rear of the gun after each shot in order to allow subsequent rounds/bullets to be in position for subsequent firing. This is such a problem that an entire line of products, sometimes called “thumb shields”, have been developed. While thumb shields keep the shooter's support hand thumb off of the slide, they are not designed to mitigate recoil in any way.
It is sometimes attempted to reduce recoil and vertical muzzle flip by using devices that allow the shooter to apply downward pressure as the bullet leaves the gun. The mitigation of such muzzle flip can enable the shooter to quickly and accurately make follow-on shots. To address this, there exist various products on the market, sometimes termed ‘thumb rests’, that ostensibly mitigate muzzle flip by using a mechanism which allows exerting downward pressure with the support hand thumb during firing. However, these products are not known to be retractable. As such, a weapon with one of these thumb rest products can never be holstered. Additionally, such products often require the services of gunsmiths to attach the thumb rest, with the unwanted byproduct of permanently altering the handgun.
Consequently, a more effective mechanism for enabling a user to reduce or eliminate the “jump” or recoil effect is desired.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.